The Sculptured House, designed by architect Charles Deaton, and located on Genesee Mountain near Genesee Park was featured in Woody Allen's Sleeper. Ironically, while Allen shot the exterior of the house to place the scene, the interior shots were done elsewhere as the interior of the Sculptured House remained unfinished until 2003. You can now rent the fully furnished house by the night, in case you wanted to recreate Allen's famous robot scene.

The movie may have failed to convey the raw emotion of the animated series, but the set producers at least had fun envisioning Æon Flux's dystopian future. We wouldn't mind a top that matched our sexy home décor.

Living the valid life. Gattaca set designers created a near future world where those with the right genes live within the créme de la créme of interior design. From Uma Thurman's floor to ceiling glass living room to Jude Law's modern and spare interior, we'd lengthen our legs and implant someone else's blood in order to clinch a deal with their realtor.

Before Battlestar Galactica's resident scientist got his planet nuked he sure did have a sweet pad. Oh yah, and Six wasn't a bad addition to the décor.

Most of the Batman movies have had amazing set design, but tended to age Bruce Wayne as he sat amongst his antiques. Peter Lando's work on the caped crusader's Gotham digs in The Dark Knight truly reflected Bruce Wayne's playboy lifestyle. How do we get invited over?

While the majority of the architecture and interiors in Blade Runner were a bit depressing, Dr. Eldon Tyrell's penthouse was a beaut, especially when you take into account the side hugging elevators you have to take to get up to the place.

The Island. Bad movie, great future tech concepts like this amazing multi-touch computer monitor as desk.

Sure living in Minority Report means you'll be arrested for a crime you haven't committed yet, but before they caught Tom Cruise was coming home to a sweet pad. Is that a ceiling full of skylights we see?

We mentioned it before and we'll mention it again. If digitizing books means we can make room for the Circuit transporter in Logan's Run we're all for it.

This is, of course, just our opinion, and feel free to disagree in comments. We went back and forth about several of these films, and there were a few others that we almost included instead, so we're not claiming infallibility here. If you want to view this in non-gallery format, click here, and I promise it'll work.

Pitch Black. This is nearly the perfect movie — a gritty anti-hero with weird eyes that can see in the dark is on a prison ship, which crashes on an alien planet. The lurking monsters are ominous and alarming, but the film's real mystery is Riddick himself — the Furyan inspires loathing, hero-worship and a desperate longing for the anti-hero to become a hero by the movie's end. Like Riddick's own eyes, our view of him only really works when we see him through total darkness.

Avatar. I'm going to post my review of this film in a few days, closer to its actual release date. But this is definitely one of the decade's most significant science-fiction films, both in its startling new look and in its elaborate alien world. Sigourney Weaver is one of the few heroic scientists we've seen in movies lately, and she fearlessly spouts facts about the science of Pandora. Avatar is by no means a perfect movie — it's a frustrating mixture of brilliance and utter cheese — but it's clearly an important movie in science-fiction history.

Slither. This movie sort of slid (I'm tempted to say slithered) under the radar, but it's one of the great all-time alien possession movies, and a brilliant metaphor for being trapped in a bad marriage. An alien parasite lands in a small town and takes over a woman's awful husband — and then it starts infecting everyone else in town, so that they all speak with the husband's voice. Wherever the wife goes, she hears her husband talking to her. And then people start getting grotesquely pregnant with alien offspring — this sort of thing is really why body horror was invented.

Star Trek. A young hero reluctantly starts to claim his true destined greatness... only to find out that his whole life has been altered, and maybe wrecked, by time-traveling, tattooed maniacs from the future. It's a weird spin on a Star Trek movie, but considering how hard it was to imagine being thrilled by another Trek after Nemesis, this film is a marvel. Plot holes, frat-boy antics, "red matter" and all, it's still the film that recharged Star Trek and may have helped bring back space-opera as a genre. And Spock has never been so... fascinating.

Donnie Darko has garnered an enduring cult fan base, for good reason. Its blend of mysicism and weird physics has aged amazingly well, and we still get lost in its "tangent universes." We keep hoping Richard Kelly will make another film that's both as mind-blowing and as well-constructed as this one.

Robot Stories. Another great movie that didn't get enough props when it came out. Greg Pak, who went on to write the Planet Hulk storyline for Marvel Comics, creates an anthology of three stories about robots that show how much robots are connected to our emotional lives — and what will happen when robots get emotions. In one story, two office robots fall in love, only to find that robot love is forbidden. In another story, a mother becomes determined to help her dying son amass the perfect collection of robot action figures — at any cost, even stealing. You'll see robots in a whole new light after watching this film.

Spider-Man 2. There were a number of superhero films that managed to bring the greatness of comics' storylines to life in the first half of the decade, including two X-Men movies and two Spider-Man movies. For my money, though, this is the best of the bunch, particularly because of Alfred Molina's Doc Octopus. Peter Parker's superpowered angst collides with Doc Octopus' cyborg identity crisis, and both hero and villain seem to be clinging to their identities by a thread. Even though we wish Peter Parker could keep his damn mask on, it's still thrilling and maybe the most perfect straight-up superhero movie of all.

Sleep Dealer. Alex Rivera's look at the dark side of telecommuting is one of the most memorable and intense films we've seen lately. In the future, everything depends on the dollar — you can't even access water reservoirs in Mexico or speak to your family in another town without feeding dollars into a slot. And the only way to get dollars is to get cyber nodes all over your body, allowing your nervous system to pilot machines in the United States. That way the U.S. can import Mexican labor without bringing in actual Mexicans. It's beautifully filmed and harrowing look at the ultimate form of alienated labor.

The Incredibles. The other great straight-up superhero was one of several Pixar films that we wanted to pay tribute to from the past decade. If you were as disappointed as we were by the two Fantastic Four films, then rejoice that this film does the FF right. A surprisingly light-hearted look at super-mutants in a world that learns to fear them, this movie does a better job of portraying what makes superhero comics so awesome than almost any live-action film. And we love the Omnidroid.

The Host. Sorry, Cloverfield — this was the monster-rampage movie we loved from the past few years. Unlike Clovey, the Host actually has a decent if snarky origin story, including weird chemicals dropped in the water by a callous American, causing one of the local creatures to get a little too big (and rambunctious) for comfort. More than almost any other monster movie, this film sucks us into caring about its main characters, a hapless family who operate a failing fast-food stand on the beach — we laugh at their antics and then get hopelessly, tragically, wound up in their fate when they tangle with the monster. Rob and Hud just don't quite measure up.

28 Days Later. Purists may hate this film's "fast zombies," but they're not even really zombies — they're the victims of a "rage" virus that stupid animal-rights activists cause to be released onto an unsuspecting world. Of all the apocalyptic scenarios we've seen in the past decade, 28 Days provides the best dose of terror and the sheer horror of society unraveling. When Christopher Eccleston's vicious soldier says the words, "I promised them women," your gut sinks. And the idea that the rage-virus outbreak will cure itself because the quasi-zombies will starve is genuinely clever. We were tempted to include Danny Boyle's other great SF film of the decade, Sunshine, but 28 Days is clearly better.

Paprika. A parade of nonsense images stomps through a man's dreams, forcing him to jump out a window... and it's just the beginning of the mayhem as the dream world collides with reality, in Satoshi Kon's weird exploration of dreams and their potential to tear our world apart. A machine that allows you to enter someone's dreams therapeutically gets stolen, and soon reality itself is being torn apart. Trippy, insane and mind-expanding, this is a film you need to watch more than once.

Primer. Speaking of films you need to watch more than once... few, if any, science-fiction movies talk down to their audiences less than this one. You don't even realize, for a good chunk of the movie, that the geeky characters are building a time machine. and it comes with very realistic and fascinating limitations, even as it allows the main characters to cross their own timelines over and over again, rewriting history in more and more psychotic ways. The walkman scene makes the whole thing worthwhile, just by itself.

Moon. It's interesting how many of the great science-fiction movies of the past decade are about loneliness, one way or the other — but none of them delve into isolation as hauntingly as Duncan Jones' debut feature. Sam Rockwell is amazing as the two versions of Sam Bell, who's tantalizingly close to finishing out his contract on a lunary mining station — until he finds out that things aren't ever what they seem. Add paranoia to the list of things this film does better than almost any other.

Iron Man. As we wrote when this film came out, it's actually more of a cyborg narrative than a superhero one. Jon Favreau and company wisely chose to focus on the heart of Tony Stark's origin — literally, the fusion reactor that keeps his heart from stopping, and turns him into a part-machine badass whose armor is just a shell that goes over his cybernetic body. Tony Stark's uneasy relationship with the military technology that he created parallels his unease with his new technological body — he's like the heroic flipside of Spider-Man 2's Doctor Octopus. And yes, any movie that talks about our dependence on, and unease with, technology automatically gets to leap over the pile of by-the-numbers superhero films.

The Dark Knight. See here for our argument as to why this film really is science fiction. Shorter version: Batman's fantastical technology is at the heart of the story. If Batman Begins showed how Bruce Wayne used technology to become Gotham's fearsome crime-fighter, then The Dark Knight is about how far he's willing to take that approach in the face of a mad bomber.

District 9. Most science-fiction movies, you come out of furiously debating the science or the finer points of the storyline... but this one, people walked out of speechless and shellshocked. Perhaps the ultimate "humans oppress aliens" movie, this film confronts us with a perfect allegory of our own inhumanity, through the story of a crashlanded group of aliens who are forced into shantytowns. Even before the main character, Wikus, starts turning into one of the aliens, our loyalties are getting more and more divided.

Wall-E. The other Pixar movie we couldn't help including on the list, this may have been the greatest blend of post-apocalyptic dystopia and cute robots. The love between Wall-E and Eve is both lovable and genuinely moving, and the trademark Pixar humor is in full effect with Wall-E's junkyard slapstick and spaceship antics. The funniest, and maybe the best, robot uprising we've ever seen.

Serenity. Just pretend for a second that this wasn't the continuation of a beloved TV series, and that Joss Whedon had created a whole new universe from scratch just for this film — it would still be one of the most audacious, most memorable, science-fiction films of all time. The story of the Alliance, which maintains a tenuous grip on a sprawling star system after a brutal civil war, and the lengths to which the Alliance will go to try and make people "better," Serenity is one of the great action-adventure films as well as one of the neatest SF concepts ever. When you discover the secrets of Miranda and see how River Tam becomes both the messenger and the avenger of Miranda's people, it's hard not to jump up and down in your seat.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. How far are you willing to go to get over a lost love? Are you willing to injure yourself — by erasing a huge chunk of your brief time on this planet from your own mind — just to get back at your former lover? This Charlie Kaufman/Michel Gondry joint does what all the best science fiction does: it creates a fictional technology that has the potential to change who we are as people, and then it uses it to tell a deeply personal story. The scenes where Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are wandering through Carrey's childhood memories are both unsettling and poignant, as Carrey tries to hold on to the love he was in the process of throwing away — by letting her into more of his mind.

[GameTrailersVia]

Okay, that's obviously not completely fair; after all, this last ten years have also seen things like Lost and Twilight winning over new fans, not to mention the end of the Harry Potter book series. But there's no denying that this has been a decade of recycling ideas: James Bond, Batman and Star Trek all got movie reboots (Trek also got a television one, if you count Enterprise), Star Wars gained new life as a TV show, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica was reborn to much acclaim, unlike fellow television reboots Bionic Woman, Knight Rider and V. We even have Tron waiting in the wings for next year, along with a new Charlie's Angels TV show. The most successful "new" media franchises were Transformers and Spider-Man - based on ideas that are over two decades old (You could even argue that things like Lost and Twilight are simply mashing up old ideas into relatively new forms; they're definitely standing on the shoulders of giants, at least). So what happened?

It's easy to just say "Well, the geeks are in charge of media now," even if it's not necessarily untrue. But that doesn't explain how they got there, and why they're not making us fall in love with all manner of new things, instead of retreads of old flames (Does Fringe count as new, or just an updated X-Files?). Personally, I think the blame is shared pretty much equally between creators and the audience. For all that we may cry YARM whenever someone talks about their dream to make the ultimate Logan's Run project, it's as much a desire to succeed as creative backwards-looking that's behind it; audiences, for the most part, tend not to support the new in numbers necessary to make it a big success. Look at the most successful movies of the last ten years: Each one is based on a concept that people grew up on.

So, is it simply nostalgia? Perhaps; it's tempting to play armchair psychologist and stroke the chin, commenting on a return to childhood things following the trauma of 9/11, but it doesn't quite fit, because how does that explain the domination of 2000's The Grinch or 1999's Phantom Menace? You can see definite post-9/11 tropes throughout the pop culture that followed (A simpler morality, where good guys always won and could save us from death from above, in many cases; stories of people dealing with increasingly familiar apocalypses in others), but I don't think that the prevalence of reboots was necessarily one of them. It's not laziness, either; some reboots (Battlestar Galactica, for example) put in as much work as any original concept in terms of worldbuilding and creation.

In the end, it may simply be the result of conservatism on everyone's parts: Audiences don't want to spend time or money on something they don't know will entertain them, and studios/creators don't want to spend time or money on something that they don't know will have an audience waiting for it. Movies like District 9 or Moon, web content like Dr. Horrible and the increasing use of comic books as source material for other media back this up, to an extent; the new ideas, and new voices, now have to find new - and cheaper - outlets through which to make themselves known, and become popular and proven enough for the big time. Maybe that'll have happened by the time they've been around long enough to be nostalgic about.

Ron Novy, a lecturer at the University of Central Arkansas, argues that what Batman and the Joker have in common are formative traumas that highlight how easily order can slip away. Bruce Wayne, of course, saw his parents killed in front of him as a child, thus learning an unwelcome lesson about how peace can be upturned and the law can fail.

Novy draws on Alan Moore's semi-canonical Batman: The Killing Joke to explain how the Joker's experience mirrors Batman's own. In Killing Joke, the man who'll become the Joker is a struggling stand-up comic forced to turn to crime. His pregnant wife dies just before a botched break-in at a chemical plant, where the comedian falls into a vat of chemicals that turn him into a chalk-faced, green-haired ghoul. Seeing his reflection, his mind finally breaks, and a villain is born.

Throughout Killing Joke, the Joker keeps returning to his theory that "one bad day" is all it takes for a morally upright person to access their depraved side. If anyone can sympathize, Novy points out (as have others), it's the prematurely orphaned Bruce Wayne.

By Novy's lights, Batman and the Joker have each "glimpsed behind the curtain of appearances," learning all too well how artificial, and easily broken, are the rules and codes that keep the world running smoothly. The difference lies in how they use their insights. One fights to preserve the system; the other takes a jackhammer to it.

Novy doesn't mention The Dark Knight, possibly because that movie makes too much of the hero-villain kinship to support his conclusions. Even so, his essay and Heath Ledger's anarchic portrayal of the Joker — by turns acerbic, childlike, barbarous, and oddly feminine, as if he were bored even with the unwritten rules about how a man should walk or talk — seem to be in a kind of accidental dialogue.

At one point, Ledger's Joker is called crazy, and he flatly refutes it: "I'm not. No, I'm not." It's the most serious we'll see him in the whole movie. If anything, Ledger's Joker believes he's the sanest guy around. He understands things on a level that almost no one else does — the only other person operating without illusions is Batman himself.

It's that shared alienation, Novy suggests, that makes Batman and the Joker such perfectly matched foes. Though it's a bone-deep character trait that they only have in common with each other, it's also what drives their struggle — what Novy calls "a relationship without which each one would cease to be who he now is." Or as the Joker puts it in The Dark Night, "I think you and I are destined to do this forever."

What is it like to be a Batman? [The Philosophers' Magazine]

The movie's final opening day gross was $72.7 million, which included a second record of $26.3 million for the movie's 12:01 Friday showings alone. The Friday take not only sailed past the Dark Knight's previous record of $67.2 million, but was more than double the original Twilight's debut of $36 million.

Right now, estimates for the movie's weekend haul are somewhere in the region of $125-130 million, which will leave one Dark Knight record intact (It made $158.4 million in its first weekend). But that doesn't mean that estimates could be wildly underestimating the appeal of shirtless, hairless supernatural teenagers. After all, the original weekend estimate was around $85 million...

'New Moon' breaks boxoffice record [Hollywood Reporter]

Captain Kirk velvet painting from The Velvet Store

Admiral Ackbar velvet painting from eBay auction.

Velvet Yoda painting for sale here, for just $1,500. Cheap!

Velvet Yoda Elvis painting, from BoingBong

Unicorns in space, from BoingBoing!

Star Wars poster on black velvet, from Mike Jackiw.

U.S.S. Enterprise on black velvet — sorry this is so low-res, but I had to include it. From Who Would Buy That? via Site Du Jour.

Chewbacca, plus weird creepy angel heads, on black velvet. From Brancusi7 on Flickr.

Baby Princess Leia on black velvet, from Bonnie Burton at the Star Wars Blog. (Thanks Bonnie!)

Admiral Ackbar (again!) From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

Unicorn on the Moon! From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

Wesley Crusher! As presented to Wil Wheaton. From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

The Winchester Bros. From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

A Sleestak, in contemplation. From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

The Joker. From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

Kim Jong Il and another Sleestak (why??) From Indignico Inc. on Flickr.

[via Superhero Hype!]

The Hollywood Reporter suggests that Guggenheim's involvement was always intended to be temporary, and that he was assigned to the new series "[b]ecause of Goyer's limited hands-on TV series experience," something that has now apparently changed with the first half of the first season under his belt. The co-creator of the series (with Star Trek alum Brannon Braga, whom he worked with on the dear departed alien invasion series Threshold), Goyer will now act as showrunner as well as executive producer for the season's remaining "back nine" episodes. What this means for his commitments to movie projects like SuperMax or the much-rumored Dark Knight sequel remain to be seen.

Marc Guggenheim leaving 'FlashForward' [Hollywood Reporter]

Here's a list of all the movies with production budgets of $170 million and over, for the past ten years. (We chose the threshold of $170 million because there were a ton of movies clustered around the $150 million-$160 million mark.) Movies that failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office are underlined.

2009:

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince: $250 million

Avatar: $237 million (according to AP)

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: $225 million (according to NY Post)

Terminator Salvation: $200 million

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of COBRA: $175 million

Up: $175 million

2008:

Quantum Of Solace: $230.6 million

Prince Caspian: $225.6 million

Iron Man: 186.5 million

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull: $185.5 million

The Dark Knight: $185.5 million

Wall-E: $180.5 million

2007:

Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End: $317.4 million

Spider-Man 3: $272.9 million

The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials: $213.4 million

Rush Hour 3: $187.4 million

2006:

Superman Returns: $295.3 million

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: $223.1 million

X-Men: The Last Stand: $209.3 million

Poseidon: $171.3 million

2005:

King Kong: $232.5 million

Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe: $197.6 million

Sahara: $176.8 million

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire: $150 million (2005 dollars)

2004:

Spider-Man 2: $232.2 million

Troy: $199.9 million

Van Helsing: $182.8 million

The Polar Express: $186.6 million

Alexander: $175.4 million

2003:

Terminator 3: $238.4 million

The Matrix: Reloaded: $176.7 million

Master And Commander: $175.6 million

The Matrix: Revolutions: $175.6 million

2000:

The Perfect Storm: $175.6 million

1999:

Wild Wild West: $221 million

The World Is Not Enough: $173.3 million

The 13th Warrior: $206.8 million

Notes: All figures are in 2009 dollars, adjusted for inflation. These figures are just production budgets, and are based on the most accurate figures we could find. They don't include marketing budgets. And of course, many of the films which failed to break even at the U.S. box office did make a profit when you factor in international box office.

Conclusions:

There hasn't been a movie as expensive as Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End since 2007, so you could argue that, over all, movies are not getting more expensive. However, after a few years where there were four mega-budgeted movies per year, the last two years have each seen six movies with budgets over $170 million (in inflation-adjusted dollars.) And as we mentioned above, this year had the most movies costing $200 million or more of any year, with next year likely to see even more films over $200 million.

And the listing above doesn't reflect this fact, but we also found a steep rise in the number of movies costing around $150 million every year — this seems to be the safe point for a film that is expected to do well, but may not be a blockbuster. Films like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, Star Trek and many others all have production budgets in the magic $150 million zone.

At the same time, Hollywood seems slightly better at picking winners lately. We haven't had a year where most of the hugely expensive movies failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office since 2004, when two historical epics, The Polar Expressand Van Helsing all bombed. Or 2003, when one of two Matrix sequels underperformed, along with Terminator 3 and Master And Commander.

One thing jumps out at me: There were apparently no budget busting movies in 2000, 2001 or 2002. Apparently the first X-Men movie, which came out in 2000, had a budget of only about $75 million. And the Star Wars prequels, hideous though they were, were apparently on the cheap side, costing around $120 million each (in non-adjusted dollars.)

Why would this be? Well, look at the three big-budget movies from 1999. Notice anything the three of them have in common? Hmmm... Other mega-expensive bombs in the late 1990s include Speed 2: Cruise Control, Lethal Weapon 4 and, of course, Waterworld. The only mega-budget movies to make money in the latter half of the 1990s were Armageddon and Titanic.

Sources: Know Your Money, Forbes.com, Listphobia, The Numbers, IMDB, Box Office Mojo, Wikipedia, and other sources as cited.

Inception:

Someone who claims to have read the whole screenplay for Christopher Nolan's "architecture of the mind" thriller posted a review online — and several salt mines worth of grains of salt are probably indicated. The synopsis is vastly different from the other dribs and drabs we've learned so far, and sounds a bit outlandish to boot. At the same time, you just never know — and I remember dismissing a spot-on accurate summary of The Dark Knight as a fake months before the movie came out.

In any case, the lucky (or lying) reviewer says that far from being about stepping into people's dreams for espionage purposes, as we've reported previously, Inception is actually about using the mind to travel to any point in space. A man named Jacob Hastley has recently become paraplegic, and he considers killing himself — but instead he discovers a connection between the human mind and space. Since both space and the mind's capacity are infinite (they are?), you can create a doorway from your mind into any point in space.

So Jacob discovers a "thought algorithm" that lets him travel to any point in the universe, without actually traveling. He visits other solar systems, and even other galaxies, and it's groovy. Then he discovers that other people already know how to do this mind-traveling thing, and they're 150 percent smarter than average humans because they use more of their brain capacity. These other travelers are aware of Jacob's travels, and Jacob has to find the truth behind the origins of the universe (hence "Inception") before the other travelers catch up to him.

The supporting cast includes Lisa, a genius and Jacob's ex-wife who dumped him after he was injured, but who shows up again right after his first trip. Plus Kansas, a dog whisperer who connects in an unearthly way with her animals, Tark, a 37-year-old man who seems to have a wisdom beyond his years, and Isabell, a blind woman who will stop at nothing to see again. So... what do you think? Do we call in TrekMovie's Senator Vreenak?

Update: Apparently it was an April Fool's prank. Oh well. [Script Shadow, thanks Ryan!]

Batman 3:

Have we already mentioned a dozen times before that Aaron Eckhart says Harvey Dent died at the end of The Dark Knight? Here's one more for luck. [MTV]

Surrogates:

Just how badly do you want to see some kick-ass robot-fighting new footage from Surrogates? Badly enough to sit through a music video by the band Breaking Benjamin? If so, then here ya go. The song is pretty dreadful, but the scenes from the movie make it look pretty darn amazing. [Thanks Mike!]

Jennifer's Body:

Director Karen Kusama explains what appealed to her about this movie's script:

I really, really loved the fact that it had this subverted fairytale kind of structure where in the end it's Needy who has to save Chip, save herself and deal with Jennifer. That she really has to become an adult over the course of the movie and that was powerful to me. I know the movie plays like a crazy, fun genre film, but I hope that there's something a little bit emotionally richer.

A tragedy befalls the town, and the townsfolk find a song to unify them in their grief. And there's a great moment where we see Jennifer cupping blood out of a torn-open torso. [ShockTillYouDrop]

Supernatural:

Tired of Sam and Dean ripping each other to pieces? Then there's good news. Eric Kripke says season five is about "building Sam and Dean back up in a way that makes them older, sadder, wiser, and, ultimately, stronger. It's funny, we've been feeling in many ways that this is the most optimistic season of Supernatural we've ever done. Because even though the exterior circumstances are a massive cluster f–k, internally, the boys aren't tearing each other apart every episode. It's more like, ‘Hey, maybe we'll lose, but, dammit, let's go down swinging.'" [EW]

Fringe:

The question with Charlie isn't so much whether he's going, but when. (And I think this means in which episode he'll leave, and it's not some kind of hint that Charlie will be time-traveling.) [EW]

Another combined Bones/Fringe promo:

FlashForward:

A new clip from the pilot, in which people start to realize those blackouts weren't just blackouts. Plus a few promos I don't think we've shown you before.

House:

House has "steamy goings-on" with she-who-shall-not-be-named in the season premiere, but Huddy is far from over — House and Cuddy have an intense attraction, but it's as much intellectual and spiritual as sexual. Also, when House, Wilson and Cuddy go on a business trip in episode seven, Lucas tags along. [EW]

Warehouse 13:

A sneak peek from next Tuesday's episode, where Myka has to save her dad (Michael Hogan!) from a sinister artifact.

Heroes:

Ready to pick at that scab again? Here are a bevy of photos from the two-part season premiere, "Orientation" and "Jump, Push, Fall." (I guess "orientation" refers to Claire going to college as well as, possibly, her much-discussed lesbian-until-graduation-ness. Must resist the temptation to make a joke about matriculation.) [Herosite]

Smallville:

Tom Welling explains that going into season nine, Clark has lost faith in his old view of the human race:

Well, in the past Clark has always been the reluctant hero. Everyone is telling him what he has to do and he doesn't want to do it. With the events of Jimmy's death [in May's season finale], along with the eight seasons building up, he realizes that his view on humanity has been wrong. And he goes to Jor-El and says, ‘I messed up, what do I do now?' Jor-El takes him in, and Clark starts his training. His training ultimately is what will prepare him to be who we all know he's going to be in the future. So it's him spending time at the Fortress of Solitude downloading all this information. At the same time, information is given to him that the fate of the world depends on Lois Lane's survival. So Clark has to struggle between his destiny and his humanity. Especially in the first few episodes it gets in the way of the training, because he just can't help but deal with humans and help people, when all Jor-El wants him to do is shut everyone off, forget about them, rise above them and be the hero he needs to be.

And Clark wears the "S" symbol on his chest, the sign of the House of El, as a means of establishing a "call sign" for himself. He's no longer the red-blue blur, just the Blur. In episode two, through a contrivedcomplicated set of circumstances caused by "interesting lighting", Lois gets a good look at the symbol on Clark's chest, but doesn't see his face. Clark has an opportunity to step forward and show her his face, but chooses not to. And here's a new pic. [TV Guide Magazine via OSCK]

Chuck:

Angie Harmon wants Captain Awesome dead because he's a superspy now. Or something. [EW]

Eastwick:

I don't think we've featured this sneak peek and promo from the "Desperate Housewitches" show:

And it's not much of a spoiler to say this show is "cheesy and dull" according to E! Online. The devil is a douche instead of debonair. Sara Rue is wasted in the background, at least in the pilot. [E! Online]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

We know, we know: the Hollywood development cycle is a slow, lumbering beast. It can take anywhere from a couple years (for a "fast-track" project) to a decade for a movie to see the light of day. But given how many people were saying, this time last year, that The Dark Knight had changed everything, you'd expect there to be at least some films in development, if not in pre-production or actually filming.

And there don't seem to be any movies in "the pipeline" that seem consciously influenced by TDK. Here are a few possible contenders:

• Super-Max. Written by TDK co-writer David S. Goyer, this film has obvious elements in common with Knight. From the scraps we've gleaned, it's about the snotty trust-fund superhero Green Arrow, who gets sent to prison, probably for a crime he didn't commit. And he has to escape from the world's toughest, most advanced prison by teaming up with a host of DC Comics supervillains. Gritty dark action? Check. Moral ambiguity? Check. Heroes who cross the line? Pretty much. Too bad that every time we hear about this film, it sounds more and more like it's stuck in limbo.

• 

• Superman Returns (Again). Every time someone mentions doing another Superman movie in the wake of 2006's underwhelming Superman Returns, they say it'll feature a "dark" take on the Last Son Of Krypton, influenced by Christopher Nolan's take on Batman. Says Warner Bros. president Jeff Robinov, "We're going to go dark, to the extent that the character will allow." More recently, rumored Super-director James McTeigue said something similar. But this "darker" Man Of Steel movie is still stuck in limbo, and Warner Bros. execs told a courtroom that they don't see much box-office potential in another Superman movie. (Granted, they were trying to get out of having to pay Superman's creators' heirs tons of money for Hollywood rights.) In fact, when they talk about doing a "darker" Superman movie, it's usually said with an air of "Well, nobody really wants to make a Superman movie, but if you put a gun to our heads, we'd do a darker one." The confusing copyright situation with Superman means they have to start development on a new Superman film in the next few years, but assuming Warners gets more enthusiasm for the cinematic Man Of Steel again, they'll probably rediscover their love for his fun, escapist side.
• 
  
  
• The Fantastic Four. News sites started claiming last spring that Fox was considering rebooting this super-family series as a darker, "less bubble-gum" version. And now, just the other day, Fox announced it was definitely rebooting the Fantastic Four. On the other hand, they tapped the decidedly non-dark Akiva Goldsman (Batman And Robin, I Am Legend) to produce the new movie, and
  Michael Greene, writer for Smallville, Heroes and the upcoming Green Lantern movie, will write the script. I am having a hard time imagining that team creating a "dark" FF movie. Plus everyone assumes Fox's sudden interest in moving forward with Reed Richards & Co. was motivated by Disney's purchase of Marvel, and the fact that Disney reportedly wants to take back all of the Marvel properties' movie rights as soon as outside deals expire. If Fox wants to impress Disney, a misguided "dark" Fantastic Four doesn't seem a likely approach.
• 
  
  
  
• Shazam. It's hard to believe, but yes, they were talking about a dark Shazam movie in the wake of The Dark Knight. This is the story of a little boy who discovers a magic cave full of statues of the Deadly Sins, plus an old wizard who teaches him a magic world that will transform him into a big galoot whose nickname is The Big Red Cheese. And then he fights an evil mad-science worm with the help of a talking tiger. Actually, screenwriter John August and director Peter Segal wanted to do a fun, upbeat take on Shazam, but Warner Bros. wanted something more like The Dark Knight. So August rewrote his fun script to make it darker:

  This wasn't "Big, with super powers" anymore. It was Black Adam versus Captain Marvel, with a considerable push into dark territory and liminal badlands like Nanda Parbat. It wasn't the action-comedy I'd signed on to write, but it was a movie I could envision getting made.

  But then Warners pulled the plug on the Shazam movie altogether — remember how I said the enthusiasm for "dark" stories often seems to coincide with a lack of enthusiasm for making the movies at all? And now Shazam is back on track, with Bill Birch writing and comics scribe Geoff Johns pitching in. Says Variety, "The studio is now looking to go back to the original DC Comics source material for inspiration." Going back to the original comics source material is slang for "not fucking it up with a dark reimagining."

So what happened? There are a few theories.

Watchmen happened. You could argue that The Dark Knight changed everything, and then Watchmen changed it all back. Zack Snyder's movie version of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel was everything the studios were saying they wanted: dark, controversial, morally gray, challenging — and it didn't resonate that well with audiences. It had a so-so opening weekend, followed by a steep drop-off. (Sample headline from the L.A. Times: "Watchmen is going largely unwatched.")

Another "dark" movie that came out this summer, Terminator Salvation, did similarly badly. (It wasn't strictly a superhero film, but it had superhero-ish themes, and starred Bruce Wayne himself, Christian Bale.) And while Frank Miller's The Spirit was more goofy than dark, it did have a noir-ish look to it and was the handiwork of the original "Dark Knight" reinventer.

Meanwhile, movies like G.I. Joe and Wolverine, which were fluffy and bubbly and only challenged you to avoid giggling at their ridiculous dialogue and acting, did great. Audiences didn't suddenly stop liking braindead fun just because they liked one smart, bleak movie.

Also, the economy happened. Suddenly, people were hurting and depressed, and there were a spate of news stories saying that people in an economic shitstorm want upbeat, happy films. They want escapism and a pick-me-up, not a dreadful reminder that life is full of no-win situations and suffering. Whether that theory is true or not, it's one that seems to have a lot of currency in Hollywood.

And finally, looking back through those articles where execs are saying "I want a dark Shazam! I want a dark Dazzler! America needs a dark Howard The Duck!", I can't help noticing that this is usually accompanied by a lack of enthusiasm for whatever superheroic properties they're discussing. Sure, superheroes are big right now, but not every superhero movie is a huge hit, and characters like Superman and the Fantastic Four have fallen squarely into the second or third tier of big-screen spandex-flexers in the past decade or so.

Execs cast about for ways to make those lame fillies run again, and the "dark" thing is one of the ideas they hit on. But at this point, nobody seems to think "dark" is a cure-all for tired superheroes. At least, let's hope not.

This is, of course, just a teaser, but it does its job - We're curious to see what's behind the seemingly random images (One of which is repeated on the movie's just-launched official site), and wondering whether or not we're feeling underwhelmed by being reminded of The Matrix so much.

[Via] (Thanks, MissMercyStreet!)

As if the grouchy Batman and swimming-pool-appearing Aquaman aren't enough to make you love Medeiros - creator of the webcomic Sopa de Salsicha ("Sausage Soup," if Google's translatobots are to be believed) - there's also his cute take on Star Wars' second-greatest double act to win you over:
Get this man working on a Star Wars comic immediately! Or a Batman comic! Or anything, really.

Parte 1 de 5 (Story continues from there) [Hellatoons]

Savage, created by Street and Smith Publications executive Henry Ralston and editor John Nanovic in response to public interest in their The Shadow character, first appeared in 1933's Doc Savage Magazine (later Doc Savage, Science Detective), in stories written by Lester Dent. The character - who "rights wrongs and punishes evildoers" with a list of skills approaching superhuman standards and his very own Fortress of Solitude before Kal-El thought of getting one - went on to star in radio shows, comic books and even a 1975 movie, but despite his longevity, never quite managed to penetrate the mainstream in the same way as the characters he inspired.

That may all change when Savage returns in November's Batman/Doc Savage Special, announced yesterday by DC Comics. Written by 100 Bullets and Wednesday Comics' Batman strip writer Brian Azzarello, and drawn by Phil Noto, the one-shot special will reintroduce the character through a team-up with the Dark Knight, ahead of Azzarello's First Wave project that will explore Savage and other pulp heroes in a contemporary setting.

Unveiling the Batman/Doc Savage Special [The Source]

On the face of it, it's so ridiculous that there's no chance that it could be true, especially when you trace it back to a story that claims that Cyrus dressed in a Batgirl costume to impress Warner Bros. execs recently. Wasn't that exactly what Sean Young did with Catwoman for Batman Returns, after all?

But there's something so ridiculous about it that we can't help but feel a little scared. After all, even if Warners isn't secretly hoping that Nolan will make the next Batman movie a little more family-friendly, who's to say that Nolan - a man who has cast both Katie Holmes and Scarlett Johansson in his movies, remember - wouldn't think that there's some bizarro artistic value in taking kid star Cyrus and casting her against type in a dark epic about the nature of darkness in heroic evolution as personified by a man dressed as a giant bat...?

Or, to put it another way: Alicia Silverstone didn't end up in Batman and Robin by herself.

[Via]

Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business blog reports that the live action reboot of the popular Japanese cartoon that was being worked on by 20th Century Fox — which had a completed script, courtesy of Justin Marks — is no more, thanks to rights reversion.

Once the rights became available, Atlas Entertainment — namely Dark Knight producer Charles Roven and his Get Smart producing partners Richard Suckle and Steve Alexander - quickly snapped them up, and are developing a brand new version of the character along with Wanted producer Jason Netter. Ted Kopler, another producer involved in the project, admitted that the success of Michael Bay's Transformers movies helped with the decision to grab the movie rights, but described their take as something different:

[U]nlike other robotic action movies, 'Voltron' is the personification of the human spirit, a quality that will set this movie apart.

Wait, "personification of the human spirit"? This is the same Voltron that's a giant robot made up of other robots, right...?

No studio has been announced as being involved with this project yet.

Voltron comes together again [THR Risky Business]

No word just yet on the price, but I'm estimating it will cost one adult human's dignity. While the armor is ridiculous and looked hot on Bale (strange stomach-muscle ridges aside) I'm pretty sure nobody else could pull off this look, let alone on a motorcycle. But if you can afford it — and I'm sure it's coming with a hefty price tag — more power to you.

An Officially Licensed Replica Like No Other is Coming.

- Strong Cordura Mesh Base with Heavy-duty 4 way stretch Spandex
inserts.
- Removable CE Approved Body Armor in both Jacket and Pants
- Highly detailed, removable lightweight interior lining.
- Form Molded Leather and Kevlar Armor Sectons.
- Made from Quality Tanned Cow Hides

- COMING SOON

[Universal Designs via Geekologie]

Perhaps the most damning part of the decision document was the revelation that executives at Warners shared fans' cynicism about Superman's potential (Remember, Warners and DC were the defendants in this case):

Defendants' film industry expert witness, Mr. [John] Gumpert, termed Superman as "damaged goods," a character so "uncool" as to be considered passe, an opinion echoed by Warner Bros. business affairs executive, Steven Spira... Indeed, Mr. [Alan] Horn [Warner Bros. President] admitted to being "daunted" by the fact that the 1987 theatrical release of Superman IV had generated around $15 million domestic box office, raising the specter of the "franchise [having] played out."

Almost as surreally, DC and Warners apparently argued to the court that

Superman was equivalent [in terms of public recognition and financial value] to a low-tier comic book character that appeared mostly on radio during the 1930s and 1940s and that has not been seen since a brief television show in the mid-1960s (the Green Hornet); an early 20th century series of books (Tarzan) or a 1930s series of pulp stories (Conan) later intermittently made into comic books and films; or a television, radio, and comic book character from the 1940s and 1950s, much beloved by my father, that long ago rode off into the proverbial sunset with little-to-no exploitation in film or television for decades (The Lone Ranger).

And these are the people in charge of the character?!?

There was, of course, legal value in downplaying Superman's status for WB and DC. But it's hard to shake the sense that even the character's owners don't understand the value and potential of Clark Kent's alter ego, or who (and what) he is and could be. But should we really be surprised, considering that these are the same people behind the pedestrian Smallville and almost-there-but-what-the-hell-is-with-the-stalker-thing Superman Returns?

Superman should, by rights, be up there with Batman. Certainly, he has the longevity and the high-concept, if not the moral ambiguity - and maybe that's one of the problems, that Superman's "goodness," his moral character and status as a reminder of our own potential, puts people off - to match Gotham's broodiest citizen. But what he lacks, and not necessarily for want of trying, is the pop cultural impact that Batman has had; it's not that Batman is necessarily a better character, but he's definitely one who has, at four specific points in the last decades (and, for the most part, in different ways), perfectly synched with the cultural zeitgeist to gain a weird standing as some kind of cultural avatar with a cape.

(Those points, for me, in case you're wondering: The 1960s TV show, which was less to do with Batman as a character as comic books as a medium, taking the "low art" trappings of the character and milking them for all their worth as pop art was doing the same. 1986's The Dark Knight Returns and 2008's The Dark Knight, which both used the character to embody and express paranoia and fear about politics and society in the real world, and 1989's Batman movie, which showed the power of branding, making the movie and the character foremost in everyone's minds by sheer force of making sure that no-one could turn anywhere without seeing a reminder of it.)

Superman, by comparison, is almost never allowed that level of contemporaneous value by the people telling his (mass media) stories, instead finding himself portrayed as either an anachronism due to his values or a naive outsider who doesn't fully understand the darker side of human nature (I have to separate comics from this; many comic creators such as Geoff Johns, Kurt Busiek and Grant Morrison have tried to demonstrate how Superman can and should work in modern, cynical society); I don't know whether it's that those making the stories think that that's how everyone else views Superman and that they should match that, or whether they see the character as someone out of step with modern times, but simply by taking that approach, they limit the impact Superman can have, and prevent him from becoming the success he should be.

(There's also a third route, as Bryan Singer's Superman Returns demonstrated: Superman as Jesus. But the problem with that is that, in order for the story to work as a superhero story, he has to stop turning the other cheek at some point. If you dropped a couple of "I am floating outside your window" scenes and added some more scenes of derring-do, Returns would've been a much better movie.)

Here's the thing: I firmly believe that now should be Superman's time. As The Dark Knight took all of our Bush-era worries and concerns and made them into an action movie, so should Superman be around right now to embody Obama's (still-resonant, even a year after campaigning) message of hope and positive change and being the best we can be. Instead of using Superman's inherent positivity against him, or thinking that it pushes him out of step with today's world, focus on the way in which he personifies that which we want to believe in, and the people that we want to be. If we elected a president because we believed in the ideals of Yes We Can and Hope and Change and all those buzzwords, I refuse to believe that we wouldn't want to see a movie that sold us the same message but with added punching, flying and action.

(I've said it before, and I'll say it again; Star Trek's success comes as much from it being positive and colorful and optimistic escapism as it being a good movie, this time around. Superman has those qualities in spades.)

Is Superman damaged goods? To an extent, yes, but he shouldn't be; there's nothing wrong with the character, or the concept, when done right, and I think that the audience is more ready for what he's selling now than they have been in years. What damages him most, perhaps, is the attitude from his owners that he's a problem that they don't know how to solve. The first step to stopping him being damaged goods is to stop treating him that way.

For those of you coming to this late, The Middleman was a graphic novel that spawned a television show on ABC Family last year. It followed the adventures of art student Wendy Watson, who takes a temp job that turns out to be an apprenticeship with the Middleman, a mysterious superhero who fights monsters and mad scientists. And the Middleman strikes up an awkward but really sweet flirtation with Wendy's roommate Lacey.

The Forbidden Romance Contingency: Show creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach says he balked at having any kind of romance between MM and Lacey. "I was only willing to make it a joke in the pilot," but insisted that would be the end of it. The pilot, incidentally, was 90 percent the same as the first issue of his graphic novel, laying out the characters as broad archetypes: the stoic, quirky hero, the snarky art student and her idealistic roommate.

But this is what happens when you develop a TV show, Grillo-Marxuach says. You bring that story that you created sitting in a room by yourself into a room full of other writers, and they start putting in their own ideas and influences. And you bring in actors like Natalie Morales (Wendy Watson), Matt Keeslar (The Middleman) and Brit Morgan (Lacey Thornfield) and they have bring their own stuff to the characters. One of the things that really jumps out at you, if you read the graphic novel (which you should) and then watch the TV series (which you most definitely should) is how much more complex and nuanced the characters become. Grillo-Marxuach says that's a result of working on the characters in a collaborative setting.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And Grillo-Marxuach says he has "boundaries" in his own writing ability, stuff he can't or doesn't do. So when the other writers on the show started pushing for Lacey and MM to go on a date, Grillo-Marxuach pushed back. "But the writers in the writer's room kept insisiting... It's weird to be a showrunner at loggerheads with the writing room." He objected for several reasons: "He's older than she is, he's Wendy's boss and an authority figure." But in the end, he gave in, and that led to some of the more poignant moments in the show, and deepened the characters immensely. "If it was just me writing this in my room by miself doing every episode you'd never have seen that," says Grillo-Marxuach. "I'm not a megalmanical show runner, and I like it when people make my work better."

The Superhero Comedy Initiative: We just sat down and watched most of the show's run once again on DVD — the DVD box set comes out July 28, incidentally — and it's striking how much the show feels like a straight-up comedy when you watch a bunch of episodes in a row. Grillo-Marxuach is happy for people to view The Middleman as a comedy. "It was always a comedy, in that it always riffs on popular culture, and it always had this very specific pattery way of talking."

"If you want to send a message to the world — and I don't know that the show was a big message show — it's better to do it by making people laugh than by being preachy," Grillo-Marxuach says. The Middleman "was always a very sweet-souled show, and it had a lot of heart. It has a lot of pity towards villains. It says that evil is little people doing a lot of work not to be good, even though being good is probably easier."

And as we talked about last summer at Comic Con, a big part of the show's lightness is in response to the fetishization of darkness in genre entertainment of the past 20 years, shows and movies which insist that life is hard and full of struggle, and heroism will destroy your life. In response, "an affirmation of the possibility of joy and accomplishment is very much what the show is all about. Of course, my show got canceled after 12 episodes, and The Dark Knight made $600 billion," notes Grillo-Marxuach.

The Unlikely Terry Nation In-Joke Alert:The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The fact that The Middleman is such an upbeat show makes it even funnier that — SPOILER ALERT — the unfilmed final episode is full of tiny references to Blake's 7, the famously depressing British science fiction series. I would list them, but we'd be here all day. "I was trying to find the show that has the most depressing series finale ever" to reference in The Middleman's finale, says Grillo-Marxuach. That unfilmed final episode, of course, is coming out as a graphic novel in time for Comic Con, and there'll be a reading of the episode's script, featuring the original cast, on Thursday at Comic Con. And for those who missed it, here's the official description:

Who is The Middleman's long-lost love? Can Lacey Thornfield ever forget her requited but never-acted-upon attraction to The Middleman? Is Manservant Neville a beneficent plutocrat or an evil madman with a nefarious plan for world domination? Will Wendy Watson and Tyler Ford ever find time for one another? Will Wendy Watson ever wear a slave girl costume? All your burning questions will be answered - and all your burning answers will be questioned - in this season-ending, series-concluding installment of The Middleman.

And at the right is a sneak peek at the graphic novel's final image of MM, from original artist Les McClain.

Anyway, all of those Blake's 7 references are there to set up a downer ending, but the graphic novel's actual ending is not that bleak, says Grillo-Marxuach. In fact, the graphic novel version of the series finale has a more upbeat ending than the actual episode would have had if it had been filmed as planned. By the time the show's creators were working on the 13th episode, they were exhausted from doing the first 12 and struggling with "big budget obstacles," and their beloved colleague Neil Levin had just died. (The show's 12th and final episode is dedicated to Levin.) But since Grillo-Marxuach had some time to rework the script slightly between the show's cancellation and the graphic novel coming out, "I found a way to end it on a more optimistic note... Had we shot it, it would have had more weariness."

So as Grillo-Marxuach puts it, "In our world, Blake is not evil, and the Federation is destroyed." (This led to us having a huge debate over whether Blake is evil in the Blake's 7 series finale.)

The "Never Say Never Again" Potential: So if the DVD box set sells a billion copies, could The Middleman still return in some form? Absolutely, says Grillo-Marxuach. "The nice thing is, this happened with Firefly, it happened with Futurama, it happened with Family Guy. There's a history of cult shows being found and further exploited by the corporations, in a good way."

So this seems like a great moment to plug the DVDs, which are coming out July 28 on Shout Factory. We'll post a review of the box set later, but they're already available for preorder at Amazon.com. And it's never too early to do your Christmas shopping. You never know when your local shopping mall will be overrun with gun-toting gorillas, after all.